Florida Cooperative Geologic Mapping Project

This project was designed to provide the framework for understanding (1) ecosystem variability and change prior to and during human development of South Florida (i.e., the detailed ecosystem history over the last 200 years, differentiating natural variability from man-made change) and (2) the resource distribution (primarily water and phosphate) in the subsurface of Florida (i.e., the detailed geology of constraining and resource units). The overall strategy is is to: 1. Sample modern environments throughout the Greater Everglades Ecosystem to understand the present ecosystem and locate undisturbed shallow sediment cores to analyze ecosystem variability and change over the last few hundred years. 2. Analyze deep cores for sedimentology, diagenesis, biostratigraphy, paleoecology, and chemostratigraphy in transects across the southern Florida Peninsula to better understand the factors controlling ground water movement and to define aquifer characteristics. In order to understand the role of facies relationships and genetic depositional units in determining groundwater flow, the distribution and abundance of micro mollusks, foraminifers, dinocysts, ostracodes, pollen and spores, and charcoal will be analyzed, and strontium isotopes will be used for geochronology.

A multitude of water-related societal issues face southern Florida in the 1990's. These issues include the increasing demands for water for agriculture; business, and the rapidly growing population in the Naples and Miami area (Miami showing the fourth fastest growth rate in the U.S. in the 1980's), the recently mandated restoration of natural sheet flow through the Everglades ecosystem, the effects of runoff from agricultural and urban areas, and the vitality of the important fisheries of Florida Bay and Biscayne Bay. This project provides baselines for ecosystem variability and tracks the change in ecosystems through the last several hundred years to provide critical information for reasonable restoration targets to land planners and managers in southern Florida. In addition, it provides the geologic framework for the aquifers that supply water to the area.